I had a conversation a few weeks ago with a friend of mine who grew up in Connecticut. He taught for a few years and told me that Joanne Woodward was home room mother for his class one year.

So of course, I was interested in what he had to say about this celebrity couple. He had nothing but nice things to say about both of them. They were real, they were wonderful parents and they were just plain nice folks.

They were both larger than life.

I shared with him that Joanne Woodward and my parents were born in the same county.

Loved Paul's comments about the hamburger and steak analogy. Sounds like a guy who truly appreciated his wife. They had a lasting marriage so apparently they were doing something right.

I remember that Joanne Woodward did NOT like Paul Newman's answer to why he didn't stray (Why settle for hamburger, when you have steak was its gist). Her objection presumably to being compared to meat gave me a glimpse into their marriage.

If you haven't seen the two of them in "The Long, Hot Summer," boy, have you got a treat in store for you! Talk about sexual chemistry! She's a repressed daughter (librarian? teacher?) of the richest man in the county, saddled with a very popular younger sister (AKA, a tramp). Newman plays a clerk in her father's store, if I remember correctly, who is not of her social class and from a disreputable family. I can't imagine that anyone who likes romances wouldn't love this movie.

My mother heard a wonderful Paul Newman story at a Kenyon College event in his honor...

The man telling the story had been rushing out the door with his wife to a premiere of a Paul Newman-directed stage play. When they were an hour away, he looked at his outfit and realized he'd put on a suit, and everybody else at such a big event would certainly be wearing a tuxedo. His wife told him, "Better a suit than late," so he gave up and they kept driving. Of course he was the only man in the entire audience not wearing a tux, and he felt pretty mortified and underdressed during the whole play.

After the play, everybody was mingling in the lobby talking, when he realizes there's one other man not wearing a tuxedo - the only other suit in the theater. And it's Paul Newman. Paul Newman notices the other suit, walks up to him, and says, "You look like the kind of guy who would like a beer." And the two of them spend an hour after the show chatting, all because the guy put on a suit instead of a tuxedo by mistake.

And can we mention how completely gorgeous he was?? I was in Barnes and Noble yesterday and noticed this cover on entertainment weekly. Those blue eyes are so startling. He was certainly one of a kind.